KOCHI: Sarith PS, accused in gold and dollar smuggling cases, has revealed to Enforcement Directorate (ED) that a packet containing currency notes was delivered to a delegation led by the chief minister that was touring the UAE from Thiruvananthapuram. However, Sarith has not revealed details regarding the recipient of the packet and the date on which the incident took place.He revealed this in response to the seventh question asked by ED during the interrogation at Poojapura Central Jail on December 16, 2020.
The question was whether former principal secretary M Sivasankar had any role in smuggling of currency notes. He answered in the affirmative and narrated the incident to ED.“I remember one incident that occurred just after the departure of a delegation headed by chief minister of Kerala to the UAE. While the delegation was in the UAE, I got a call from an official named Harikrishnan working in the protocol office at the Government Secretariat.
He informed me that the delegation had forgotten to carry a packet along with them and his Excellency (consul-general) agreed to deliver that packet to the delegation in the UAE,” reads the statement. Sarith spoke to Swapna about the incident. In response, Swapna said that Sivasankar had already informed the matter to the consul-general and directed him to collect the bag from the Secretariat.
“Accordingly, I went to the protocol office and collected the packet from Harikrishnan. After I reached the UAE Consulate office, I scanned the packet with the scanner in the Consulate and found that the packet contained currency notes and some other items. Later I gave the packet to Ahmed Al Douki as informed by Swapna on the direction of his Excellency. Douki was a diplomat in UAE Consulate and was planning to go to Dubai that day,” the statement said.
Sarith told ED that the idea of smuggling gold using diplomatic baggage was that of the Consul General and finance head Khalid Ali Shoukry. According to him, both were carrying out such illegal activities since working in the UAE Mission in Vietnam before coming to Thiruvananthapuram. On two occasions, women from UAE who visited the Consulate were also engaged in smuggling activities.